Plash!
One horrible, echoing, weird sound that seemed as if it would never
cease to reverberate against the sides of the pit-shaft, and then a
silence so terrible that Philip Hexton felt as if all was over.
He unclosed his eyes for a last look towards heaven, and the blue sky
was above him; the great hazel stubb had made a clearance; a feeling of
hope once more filled his breast. He had hold of a stout, tough bough,
and he had only to relieve himself of the clinging bramble to be able to
climb up into safety.
But he was weak and exhausted now, and it took a greater effort than he
expected before he sank down upon his knees amongst the mossy growth and
thanked God for his escape.
A young and healthy man soon recovers from a shock, and before long
Philip Hexton was on his way back to his home, with the exultant feeling
upon him that the risk he had run was for the benefit of his fellows,
for he could see now the way to provide, at a very moderate cost, a
second shaft to their own pit.
There it was already made. It was only a question of acquiring some
fifty or a hundred acres of worthless land with the old pit workings,
and the ridding of those workings from water. They had galleries in
their own mine that he knew nearly reached those of the old, and to
drive from one to the other was the simplest of things.
The very next day, provided with the old map of the mine, which he had
been studying half the night, he descended the shaft with one of the
shifts of men, and, providing himself with a lamp, he set off alone to
explore some of the old workings which had been given up in consequence
of the dread that at any time the ancient mine might be tapped and their
own pit flooded by the enormous gathering of water.
It was a long and dreary journey, one which no one saw him undertake,
for the men went off at once to their work; and after going down two or
three of the long black passages Philip felt a strange sense of
hesitation about going farther.
It was not, he told himself, that he was afraid of journeying alone
there in the dark; and, armed as he was with one of the best of the
Davy-lamps, he had no fear of gas; the choke-damp there was no occasion
to mind, as that followed an explosion; but all the same he felt such a
hesitation as he had never, even on his first descent, felt before.
"I must be shaken by my adventure," he said to himself laughing; and he
considered for a moment or two whether he should go back and get one of
the overmen for a companion.
He gave up the idea, though, directly, and went on, forcing himself to
master the nervous sensation and to do his duty like a man.
There were miles of galleries in the pit, and it was no light task to
make a way through mud and water between the crumbling walls. Here and
there great patches of the roof had tumbled down, and in places he found
that the masses of coal that had been left as pillars had been taken
away, and the ceiling of the pit had come down bodily, so that he had to
sit down and study his map to find a way round to the part he wanted to
reach.
It was strangely depressing work; but Philip Hexton had a big spirit,
the strength of mind that has enabled Englishmen to make their nation
what it is; and hence no sooner was he stopped by a fall of rock in one
place, than he sought out and found a way round to the other side.
Sometimes a clear dry part would enable him to get along pretty quickly,
but generally it was very slow travelling; often, where the seam of coal
hewn-out had been a thin one, it was in a position bent double.
And now, as he exerted himself, he felt less of the feeling of dread.
Once only did it come very strongly, and that was when, after getting by
a very narrow, crumbling part of the workings, he heard a heavy fall of
rock behind, and he crept cautiously back, feeling sure that the passage
by which he had come was stopped up, and that he might be left there to
starve, buried alive, without a prospect of being saved.
A reference to his map reassured him, and he went on. But now a fresh
doubt assailed him. Suppose his lamp should go out: how would it be
possible to get back?
If he had been ready to give way to them there were hundreds of such
fear-engendered thoughts ready to oppress him; but he fought against
them steadily, and was the master as he plodded on, with his faintly
marked shadow, distorted and broken as it fell upon the walls, forming
his only companion in his quest.
"Poor mother!" he thought once; "how alarmed she would be if she could
see me now!"
"But it must be done," he added, half aloud. "Ours is notoriously a
fiery mine. Ah! it is foul here."
For the lamp began to sputter and burn dimly within the gauze for a few
minutes, till he reached a more open place, thinking--"If I can get this
task done, I shall have made the mine comparatively safe, and who knows
but the old workings may not prove, with our modern appliances, well
worthy of carrying on?"
He was so elated by these thoughts that the remainder of his dark
subterranean journey seemed not one-half as difficult; and at last he
seated himself on a block of stone fallen from the roof to consult his
map.
"Let me see," he said, half aloud, as, with the map spread upon his
knees, he held his lamp so that the dim light might the better fall upon
the canvas-backed paper; "I must be about here; and if so, according to
this plan the old mine workings might be reached through this gallery,
or this, or this."
He ran his finger along the different lines drawn in red ink, and was
studiously considering how it would be best to proceed if he could win
his father, and, through him, the other proprietors, to his plans, when
all at once he started up, listening attentively, for it seemed to him
that he could hear a sound as of some one working with pick or bar away
ahead of the place where he was seated, and not back in the yielding
seams of the pit.
_Tap_, _tap_, _tap_! Yes, there it was plainly enough, and from a part
of the pit where there could be no working going on.
What could it be? Nobody would be in that end of the mine. It was
completely deserted. He did not believe anyone had been in that part of
the great maze for months; there was nothing to bring a pitman there.
"Now if I were a superstitious fellow," said Philip to himself, "and
ready to believe in ghosts and goblins, I should run back and spread the
news that this part of the pit is haunted by the restless spirit of some
poor pitman who lost his life here years ago, and comes back to work.
But I don't believe in that sort of story, and I'm going to see what it
means."
All the same he felt very much startled; for it seemed so unaccountable
for anyone to be there. The men would be in the regular seams. There
was nothing to bring them here; and as they toiled at piece-work, they
would not lift a pick except to hew out coal. No overman would be here
without his knowledge; and try how he would to find some reason for the
sound, he was still at fault. The only possibility was that, in some
peculiar way the echo of a hewer's pick ran along the silent galleries,
to be reverberated from this distant wall.
"Impossible!" he said, doubling up his map and replacing it in his
breast, as he rose and took up his lamp.
"It is impossible!" he said again, as _tap_, _tap_, _tap_, the regular
stroke as of a pick was heard, and with no small feeling of trepidation
he went to search out the cause of the unusual sound.